AG's vehicle goes under the hammer

Mpho Mokwape | Friday April 25, 2014 12:25

 

Deputy Sheriff James Moyo is set to auction the BMW on May 6 at Broadhurst Police Station, to recover legal costs for lawyers representing the lecturers, according to a court order. Yesterday, Walter David Ditiro, representing the lecturers, confirmed to Mmegi that the AG’s vehicle would be auctioned to cover costs incurred during a legal battle with government in 2012.

In August 2012, Francistown High Court Judge, Gaopalelwe Ketlogetswe, issued a default judgment against the government  ordering that the IHS lecturers be paid overtime allowances within 60 days.

The default judgment from Ketlogetswe followed government’s failure to appear in court after the lecturers sought the court’s intervention and sued the Director of Public Service Management (DPSM) for overtime allowances. Ditiro emphasised that next month’s auction had nothing to do with the payment of the nurses as they had all been paid after the court order was issued. Rather, the auction is specifically to cover the legal costs the plaintiffs were awarded by the Francistown High Court.

The IHS nurses successfully argued that they should be paid overtime allowances like their colleagues working in hospitals and clinics. Government, however, said that the IHS nurses were not entitled to overtime allowances as they were lecturing and not practicing nursing.

The lectures had asked the court for an order declaring that by virtue of their positions in the nursing cadre, they were entitled to the 30 percent overtime allowance paid to the other nurses.

They argued that the duties they were assigned by the Ministry of Health, to train and produce dependable nurses, should attract the same allowance as other nurses.